We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Udenie Wickramasinghe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Udenie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Tragedy or Trajectory? To me success is very much based on how we absorb personal losses in life and how you use it to uncover your integrity that has been buried by your own hands years ago. If you have been held down by guilt, pain, trauma, a divorce, loss of a family, painful childhood memories, a horrible job or a broken relationship, I want people to understand that no tragedy is wasted on you. It makes your life richer, you are wiser, you sync with your true authentic self. When a person arrives where he should be emotionally, socially, physically accepted in his own terms, he is free. You are free of self sabotaging, others views on you because from now on it only leads you to something magnificent. When you carry yourself with such mentality, success follows you around. Everything you do is a true representation of how it should have always meant to be. So, take every pain that has been thrown at you, sit with it and see how you can use it as a qualification to get where you need to go. That’s exactly how I created Mindful Eats.

Udenie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a vegetarian cook and I currently work for private clients. When the pandemic was brutal on me, I remember thinking how exactly I am going to use the most dreadful times in our lives as an opportunity. I did some sketches, a “brand” or an idea that might set me apart from the crowd. I only had $300 to start with my first client. It felt fictional: the dream, building a new life, a massive career change…fear was crippling me. However, the only certain thing was my ability as a cook and I have a mind that absorbs everything around me and evolves magnificently. So I wrote this story in my head that how exactly I want to see myself in a few years. I used my Instagram as a way to journal everything I felt, every set back I faced and celebrated tiny victories with a big heart. I was committed to make things better for myself, not for anyone and I didn’t care what others thought of me. I take pride in what I do, I write about my food, and I photograph the beauty in this journey. I see no limits in my ability to do something unique and I absolutely believe in myself.

When I start with a client, I create a menu for them every week. The most successful clients are the ones who never changed me and absolutely accepted my creativity in the kitchen. During experimenting phase I work a lot to introduce new things, different flavors and of course a variety of vegetables they are not used to. Then, we exclude certain things and include flavors they are comfortable with. Once we settle into a routine, I use the same ingredients in different ways to make a new menu every week. This method has been extremely successful. I also do regional cooking for my Sri Lankan community in Miami. I have built a name for my vegetable curries and the community has been such a joy to work with.

Once I “settled” into my new role as a private cook, I was hungry to steer into a new direction. I missed interacting with people. I was a high school teacher and a social worker back in the days. I love being around people and more than anything I love to contribute to this world in some way. So I created Mindful Eats Table, a vegetarian supper club I host every month. It has opened up a whole new world of opportunity for me. I get to meet this wonderful individuals who come from all walks of life. We share stories and continue to inspire each other. It’s the sense of community, togetherness and more than anything feeling alive makes me feel absolutely grateful for the life I have. Every little experience either steered me away from the wrong dream or contributed to the real one. So, if anyone wants to know why I do what I do, it’s because I fought so much to be this person. Starting from somewhere with whatever you already have is the best place to start chasing your dreams.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I went through a personal transformation for the last few years. I left a “picture perfect” marriage. I was leaving him for years: every Christmas, every new year I left him in my heart because I didn’t recognize the woman I have become. Something inside me was permanently dead. I think there was no hope. Hope is not just being optimistic. Hope doesn’t have certainty yet carries unbelievable power to live. I raised two beautiful boys, I had food on the table, a gorgeous home, yet I was dead inside. I was hungry for real affection, little things mattered to me, being seen was important. The more stale my life got childhood pain resurfaced. I started to question the very purpose of waking up in the morning. “So, is this it?” I asked myself. I was deeply disconnected from society, real human interaction was nonexistent. I was suffering from postpartum depression, anxiety and many health issues. There was something wrong in my body every year, stress patches all over my skin. Death became a fantasy. My marriage didn’t have enough communication or openness. I made his life comfortable, I existed to give him everything he needed and more. It was structured, firm and was never fluid. I suffered in a greater scale and reached a point that it was a matter of life and death. I wanted to live. I stayed in a marriage because of the kids, I left the same marriage because I wanted to live for them. People like me absorb life in a different way. I know my existence has a meaning and that is to contribute something to this world. It doesn’t matter how I do it, I was craving for that space and understanding. I am the last woman to go for a divorce because I don’t give up on people that easily. I must have suffered so much to do that. And walking out empty handed was absolutely terrifying. I was disowned by my family, friends left me, relatives showed a blind eye. Suddenly, the world that mattered to me didn’t exist. Noise died down so was others’ opinions. I was humbled by silence and a vast space to reflect, being powerless to absolute rawness just like that.

I survived.

I started from nothing in my forties, I had to do it all over again. Once the burden of self sacrifice was lifted, hope seeped back into my heart. There was self love, so passion could see daylight. I found my creative self again that was buried by social expectations, enforced by the powerful against the powerless.

My dreams never made sense to others. I was greatly misunderstood or dismissed by my own family. And I have painfully accepted that. I have built the life I have now on the greatest catastrophe of my life. My struggle was internal so no one knew how much I cried behind the walls. You may ask, is it worthy? My answer is I am Here! Alive and Well! and my two boys have a happy mother who will teach them what to look in a woman when they choose their partners. They will learn how to recognize a woman’s strength, abilities and be grateful for her gentleness. They will respect the fact that she is a human being and has every right to believe in her dreams. Every woman has a choice. Her life matters. Don’t let the world tell you otherwise. If you are stuck, get unstuck and before you know it you are one step closer to breakthrough.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Being self employed is a risky business. You have to live on uncertainty a lot. This needs adaptability. Change is painful to many people and I am not any different. I hustled in a creative outlet without any sense of creating a sustainable business model. There was this time I asked myself that is it a hobby or a business? I quickly changed my mindset to deliver something people understand. I unlearned being stuck in the same routine and experimented on new ideas. There are many times I am not paid when my clients take time off for travels or when they have to attend to their personal schedules. And I had to find ways to fill that loss of income by setting up a menu for catering or taking up on weekend orders. I work without a weekend off for months and its not the best life situation at all. I think many creative people go through the same struggle. We “suffer” because we don’t know how to live a different life.

At the moment, Mindful Eats has quite successfully aligned with what customers look for. I knew my ideas can serve a greater purpose. Once I found the balance when connecting with people it made big changes. Creating Mindful Eats Table laid the foundation to a better revenue creating. Mindful Eats needs time to mature and I am still at the stage where I am experimenting. Working consistently on even smaller tasks with great care will create something I never dreamed of, I feel. I am already attracting enough attention and from this point on it only gets better.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mind_full_eats/
• Other: https://www.meetup.com/mindful-eats-supper-club/

Image Credits
Photographed by Udenie Wickramasinghe